Archaeologists digging in the ruins of Cidade Velha, the once-thriving city on the Cabo Verde islands off the west coast of Africa have found the oldest Christian church in the tropics, and the horrible reason why the city was once so rich.

From the beginning of the 16th century to the 19th, slave merchants transported more than 10 million enslaved Africans to the New World. This eye-opening animation condenses over 20,528 voyages down to three agonizing minutes.

Apple recently, finally banned bonded servitude in its supply factories, which means those factories can't mistreat workers by withholding paychecks and passports until they pay off the cost it took to hire them. But hold the applause. Because they are not the only company that has forced people to work for…

Apple has banned 'bonded servitude,' which means it won't let its supplier factories make their new hires work for free to pay for the costs of hiring them. Good!!! And also: Why the hell is this just happening now?

Siri, Cortana and Alexa are robotic personal assistants, but they are also women. They live in your pockets, their skinny smart phone bodies executing your every command. They are intimate with you. But they are also, as Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore said at the Windows 10 keynote last week, "a member of your family."

A few days before Christmas, 1848, a man named William Craft gave his wife Ellen a haircut—in fact, he cut it to the nape of her neck, far shorter than any other woman in Macon, Georgia, where the Crafts lived. They picked out her clothes—a cravat, a top hat, a fine coat—and went over the plan for what felt like the…

The Statue of Freedom sitting atop the dome of the U.S. Capitol building in Washing D.C. has more alternate names than the obscure half of the Wu Tang Clan. Over the years, the names attributed to it have ranged from things like "Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace" to the far simpler, "Armed Freedom". However, the…

Rio is currently pouring its energy into building stadiums, housing, and roads to host the World Cup next summer and the Olympics in 2016. But in the process, the city is uncovering relics of its past—including evidence of its one-time reign as the busiest slave port in the Americas.

The Originals is a weird show. The four characters who came over from The Vampire Diaries to form the bedrock of the show's cast were among the least sympathetic on the parent show, and all the new characters seemed either forgettable or sort of horrible. But slowly but surely, The Originals is finding a story to…

Last night, just a month and change into serving his life + 1,000-year sentence for kidnapping three Cleveland women and keeping them captive under hellish conditions for a decade, Ariel Castro committed suicide in jail. After I heard the news, I felt a range of awful, base emotions, none of which made me feel good…

Actress and comedian Azie Mira Dungey used to work as a historical re-enactor at Mount Vernon. And 1- because George Washington's old stomping grounds are staffed with people acting out roles they might have had during the George Washington days and 2- Dungey is black, she played the role of a slave named Lizzy Mae.…

Kotaku's Evan Narcisse says that"within two minutes of playing Thralled my chest got tight and my head started to throb." The iPad game puts you in the role of a slave mother fleeing with her baby. He says it was so powerful that it made him cry.

An associate professor from the University of Mississippi Medical Center has uncovered what is quite possibly the grandaddy of all oversights. Even though the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted 148 years ago, the state of Mississippi never officially ratified the amendment on account of some sloppy paperwork. It's an…

Planking, the fad in which people take pictures of themselves lying face down and upload them to the internet, is not racist. It's just stupid. But bloggers and Twitter users are in an uproar over what they say is planking's origins in the slave trade.

This is one of the most ludicrous game parodies we've seen lately. You play the Spider-Queen of Mars, racing around classic arcade-style levels and trying to recapture your escaped Martian slaves. It's all part of Adult Swim's new viral marketing.

The walls of the old Bryce Plantation ooze blood, in creepiest scene from 2004's Evil Remains. This horror film about a slasher wearing the head of a dead dog mostly relies on ridiculous Southern gothic cliches. Allow us to demonstrate.

Science fiction is full of female sex slaves - especially of the green skinned variety. But what if you really want a male sex slave? Don't worry. Science fiction is here to teach you all about that, too. Here's how.

District 9's crustacean aliens may be the first extraterrestrials to experience South Africa's apartheid, but they're hardly the first species to feel the sting of oppression. We list science fiction's other downtrodden, enslaved, and dehumanized (so to speak) species.

Click to viewScience fiction never fails to predict bizarre, unwelcome futures and the current global economic meltdown is no exception. We love to imagine all the ways our world will end not with a bang, but with a flood of hemorrhaged garbage cash. Two of this year's scifi film crop, Babylon A.D. and The Road,…